Dear ukbob,

""Not being an American I ask the following question out of sheer ignorance, I thought that the American Constitution prevented Congress or the President from enacting such draconian laws.

""Therefore, is it possible that such a law could, at some future date, be declared as “unconstitutional” and struck out?

Unfortunately, the last couple of administrations here in the US haven't read the constitution of the US. And their supreme court appointees go along with them sometimes. If a case is appealed, it may take years to get to the supreme court and then they may not hear the case.
The last Democrat to run for presidents wife, Tipper Gore, was the head of group that wanted to ban explicit lyrics in music. And while Clinton was president the prison population here in the US doubled to 2.2 million people! Also, 68 new capitol crimes were added to the Federal lawbooks and groundwork for the Patriot Act was laid.

President Bush was doing worse than Clinton before the 911. Since then he and his Neocon buddies have really been doing an all out assault on the constitution so that even the radical right people are starting to get scared of him. Here's the governments official website on the Patriot Act.

http://www.lifeandliberty.gov/

Even the title is classic 1984 doublespeak...

Another new government program is called Matrix, provisions here let the government look at your library cards and credit card purcahses, again if you are checked out the librarian can be jailed if they tell you that you were fingered...

MATRIX (Multistate Anti-TeRrorism Information eXchange) is the latest data mining program to emerge from the government.__This surveillance system combines information about individuals from government databases and private-sector data companies.__It then makes those dossiers available for search by government officials and combs through the millions of files in a search for “anomalies” that may be indicative of terrorist or other criminal activity.

Most Americans are to busy trying to make enough to live on to worry much about these issues. We live from check to check and if you miss one you could soon join the ranks of the unemployed homeless...



http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=14240&c=130_